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May 23, 2018

In a major move, the Defence Ministry on Tuesday approved a series of
measures to simplify procurement of military platforms and weapons for
the three services with an aim to speed up their modernisation.

The
decision to cut procedural delays in the procurement process was taken
at a meeting of the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) chaired by Defence
Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

"To streamline defence procurement
procedures and to reduce timelines so as to ensure timely delivery of
equipment to the Armed Forces, the DAC discussed and approved various
measures to simplify the defence procurement procedure," the defence
ministry said in a statement.

It said the significant changes
includes devolution of powers within the ministry and the service
headquarters, concurrent running of the acquisition process instead of
sequential stage clearance, deletion of repetitive processes and
aligning of various documents with revised financial guidelines.

"These
measures will go a long way in obviating undue procedural delays and
will hasten activities besides shrinking procurement timelines," said
the ministry.

The new measures will be incorporated in the latest defence procurement policy.

According
to official figure, a whopping Rs 4 lakh crore worth of military
procurement involving close to 135 proposals were cleared by the
government as part of efforts to modernise the armed forces.